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Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

There's plenty of "intellectually stimulating" conversation about this and has been for decades. For the most part we value civility and compromise so highly that we'll accept the routine murder of children rather than pay the price of pissing a bunch of people off with gun reform.

The conversations aren't the problem, the guns are. There's not really a path to compromise here, I don't think. Either we stop having guns like we do now and a lot of people will be vocally upset, or we continue allowing the routine murder of children. Talk about it as carefully as you want, either way there's going to be conflict.

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What gun reform do you think needs to be in place? I'm curious?

No, I'm not willing to get derailed and bogged down into specifics that can be argued or refuted right now. Sorry if that's not your intention but it's hard to judge and it's a very common one with this subject.

I am not an expert on public policy, violence, jurisprudence, or legislature. It's not my place or responsibility to design or implement the solution to this problem.

I'm a citizen who is not willing to accept that routine events like this are an acceptable cost to pay for any freedom. There are probably a wide range of policies that could prevent this, it's up to experts to figure it out. My role is to demand that they do.

thats how you end up with no freedom whatsoever - although i recognize that is a state of affairs that you may be comfortable with.

So you’re mad and you want something done, and you don’t care about the details?

Bad policy can be, and is often, worse than the status quo.

Australia's gun laws more or less and don't sell them to 18 year olds.

we have constantly and consistently 'compromised' by adding more and more gun laws. Oddly none of them prevent this kind of issue as it is already illegal to kill someone

what are you smoking? we've consistently taken away gun laws.

There certainly have been many new ones added since columbine - and a few have been taken away or expanded in the other direction sure.

Part of this depends on where you are in the US - but the gp statement is true - we have added more and more gun laws - and it's still illegal to murder people - and yet people still murder people.

two recent examples : Trump pushes the ATF to 'redefine' bump stocks as machine guns - thus illegally creating a new law.

Biden bans ammo imports from Russian - the main source of 7.62x39 ammo - one of the most common rifle rounds in the US. This massively spikes the cost of ammunition.

Biden has also pushed the ATF recently to start more shenanigans with redefining things in relation to SBRs, Pistol Braces, and Supressor parts. It remains to be seen what effect this will have.

I can tell you aren't a gun owner of course but you might still find the ATF interesting. Basically they 'reinterpret' things as they see fit and thereby things that were legal become illegal (but almost never the other way around). Its a work around as they are basically creating new laws - however that is not legally a power assigned to them.

NY and California would beg to differ.

Or we could take the spate of teenage psychopathic murderers and develop a plan to combat it sanely.

Like reducing access to guns! Yes, we can agree!

The causal model for gun violence is simple. Motivation, and access to guns. We can and should address motivations. Reducing access to guns has a strong effect too, evidenced by other countries people bring up "mass knife murders" of like 5 people in.

Arms get tired with knives. Cars can't drive everywhere. Bombs and explosive devices take special skills. Restricting access (even indirectly, through increasing cost of ownership via mandatory insurance purchases, required registration of last owner of record [and having that owner culpable when their weapons are used], and so forth) reduces gun death.

unfortunately in this digital age especially - I forsee that those who want to lash out in this mass murder way will continue to do so if we have twice as many guns or no guns at all.

Part of it is the notoriety and that comes with getting a large number - and if you can't do it will bullets - they will discover fire / carbon monixode, bleach and.. heck I'll bet there's a new fake ticktak challenge showing these things and more. how to recon to turn off AC and disable sprinklers and chain doors.. and the counts will be much higher.

I submit we need to focus on things like teaching conflict resolution, and have peer groups that can help the bullied and the slighted and things like that will likely have a better impact on changing these things.

(there's not enough counselors and they don't have enough reach when they are available)

I mean stressing the kids to learn geometry (and not conflict resolution) and just ignore the bullies is not working.

luckily locking doors and other methods can help with the bullets issue, that won't prevent mustard gas or a bus exhaust from penetrating and making someone famous.

Let's test thst assertion. > Okay, let's try the "double" way first though.

> unfortunately in this digital age especially - I forsee that those who want to lash out in this mass murder way will continue to do so if we have twice as many guns or no guns at all.

Let's test thst assertion.

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